raw / barf feeders please!

[needrawhelp]

My 8 week old GR pup eats his chicken wings at an alarming rate- he seems to give hem a couple of chews, break them down into 3 chunks then seems to swallow the bits more or less whole! Is this normal? I've read that older dogs shouldn't have wings as they 'inhale' them but honestly this is what my pup seems to be doing! He's not overly large either. Even when I hold onto the wings to slow him down a bit he manages to wressle them away and gulp them down!

Yup, mine do that with chicken wings too. You need to be moving on the bigger pieces like legs so he gets more chewing. Also they are easier for you to hold to stop gulping.

Thanks for that. Really scary getting used to raw feeding- never done it before!

It can be a bit nerve wracking. I was terrified to begin with but have been doing for 12 years now and you do get really very casual about it. It gets to be quite fun though and your dog will thank you for it.

The newest pup is now 12 weeks old. She's a lab/springer cross and she can easily crunch through a chicken quarter. As well as being a bit small, chicken wings don't have enough meat on them for a growing pup. They need lots and lots of protein so you really need to be feeding meat, preferably in big chunks, with a bit of bone. The 3 for £10 chickens in Tesco are good. I feed those and chicken leg quarters, supplemented with tripe, heart, liver and gnarly beef lumps from Pets at Home. Other stuff occasionally when I spot it cheap. Keep your eyes open for final reduction deals in supermarkets on nearly out of date meat. We've snagged some fantastic stuff that was reduced to almost nothing because it looked horrible and no one else would buy it! :). You also need to be thinking about oily fish or fish body oil for the omega 3 oils.

That's fantastic advice thanks. Our breeder raw feeds which is how we got on to it and told us that the pups would be on things like tripe and chicken wings from 5 weeks. We read up on it and were sold on the idea but on collection of the pup we discovered that because none of the other new owners of the litter of 10 wanted to raw feed that she hadn't bothered...!

We're introducing his raw slowly and weaning him off the fish4dogs he was on. He's had chicken wings and a chicken mince complete with bones from the Butcher but has had an upset tummy since we tried him on some sardine. He's a very happy little chap but seems constantly starving. We're reluctant to give him too much food in case it makes his poo looser still.

We'll get there in the end!